CYC Telltale May 2000

Just like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Gene and Keith Buck are elusive, almost invisible, at CYC. Are they real or are they myth? The record books say they are very real indeed, and still notching wins on their gun belts.

The brothers grew up in San Francisco, and as Keith, the youngest by four years, puts it, he couldn’t imagine living by the bay and not learning to sail. His first boat was a little 22 foot plywood creation he found awash, and purchased for the enormous sum of $l0. Creatively named the Nincompoop, he and brother Gene sailed it in high school, finding their main accomplishment was survival. Gene made almost as good a deal in his first boat when he found a 26 ft. WWII Coast Guard whale boat, with a hole in it, for sale. It cost $300! He had to round up six friends to raise the money, and they formed a partnership to sail the boat. Here, the brothers’ lives took different turns.

Keith found himself in the Navy in the Pacific on a destroyer escort for a couple of years. Luckily, this did not destroy his love of sailing. He came home to the bay area, and bought a 210, which he sailed with CYC members, Russ Schneider and Al Blair. This got him a membership in the Corinthian Yacht Club in the 1950s. His next boat was a Santana 22, the first Petard. (A petard was a box filled with gunpowder, used to blow up castle gates during a siege. If you screwed up and were blown up by your own bomb, you were hoisted on your own petard, so to speak. It seemed to be an excellent name for a boat.)

On the first Petard, Keith, Al Blair, John Sutak, and Monty Rawlings won the Lipton Trophy for CYC in l975.

Deciding he needed a boat to sail the ocean, Keith bought his Farr-36, the new Petard, and the rest is history. He has won season championships in IOR, IMS, his division in the Big Boat Series, the Pacific Cup, raced to Tahiti, and just recently, won the Wheeler Cup. No wonder we never catch sight of him! Asked if he was still going to race, he replied,“Are you kidding? I’m not about to stop.”

Gene Buck ended up in France as a mechanical engineer. He spent that time in his life “on the beach” which translates to “no boat.” Moving back to the States, he settled in Marin and immediately bought a sailboat, a 30’ Hurricane, built in Sausalito. There were only seventeen of them in a very competitive class. According to Gene, “I did O.K., but there were always those guys I could hardly beat!”

His frustration led to the purchase of his beautiful Farralon Clipper, Quessant. Gene has logged many wins in the Master Mariner’s regattas and shows his boat in the classic boat shows.

When asked about the neatest things he remembers about sailing, Gene replied, “Joining the Corinthian Yacht Club with my brother, Keith in the 50s, doing a lot of sailing with him – including ocean racing and sailing a Peterson 44 to the Society Islands.”

Some sailors are serious racers, and some racers seriously want to have fun sailing. Jan Farnsworth has done exactly that during his sailing career. After joining CYC twenty-five years ago, he began doing Friday nights with Dick and Donna Cardoza. This led to the purchase of a 42 footer named Rascal (I wonder why?) Owned by Jan and two other bachelors, it leaked so badly, it took three guys to sail it and three guys to bail it! It drew 8’ and they finally sunk it in the mud at Sam’s one fine day. Stuck tight, with her sails stained red with wine, she was abandoned by Jan and all 25 party going hands, who jumped overboard, swam to Sam’s, and proceeded to get kicked out by Sam, himself.

Moving onward and upward, Jan got himself a Frisco Flyer. It turned out to be the only one on the bay that was lap strake, so it looked like a Folkboat. Consequently, Jan always got kicked out of the Flyer’s races, and had to go explainin’. Undaunted, he would sail home to the berth in Paradise Cay. Everyone on the docks would run for their cars as Jan came sailing his 12,000 pound Flyer into the harbor and came crashing into the dock!

With Opening Day almost here, Jan fondly remembers when he and his entire band from his bar went out on the 80’ Stormvogel and led the parade on Opening Day. They sailed out the gate with the band playing up a storm on the foredeck. The wind picked up, the boat heeled over, and yup, all the drums fell overboard. Ah, the life of a sailor!

Recently, Jan married his daughter off at the Corinthian Yacht Club and he is presently in a race against cancer. He is doing it with his usual sailing spirit.